Sunday, May 16, 2004

I hate blogs where people bitch about their personal lives rather than giving a personal take on some universal issue. Tonight, I'll bitch. Soon, I promise, I'm going to have a post trying to explain my general political views and trying to pinpoint exactly when it became uncool to be a liberal (just one reason I'm uncool). Or possibly my post about the recent arrival of Kevin Youkilis in the major leagues and how it's sort of a fun point of demarcation for the statheads versus the baseball luddites. But for now, I get to bitch.

About 3 weeks ago, I was running and felt a twinge in my left knee. I've had sort of minor knee issues since high school, so I figured I'd do the studly tough thing and just run through it. Except I couldn't. So I walked the 2.5 miles or so home from Davis Square. After every quarter mile or so, I'd notice that my knee didn't hurt, I'd try to run and after limping for 5 or 6 steps, I'd quickly go back to walking. Obviously, I don't learn my lesson very quickly. I'm kind of a dumbass.

Over the next week, I rested my knee, hoping time would work it back into shape. No go. After a week and a half of not being able to do anything but walk without having excruciating pain in my knee, I made an appointment to see my doctor (whoo hoo for health insurance). My doctor (whom I'd never met before) was very cool, but couldn't pinpoint it. His best guess was patellar tendinitis. So of course I google it to see whether or not I agree, and it turns out that his medical schooling was probably worth it.

Patellar tendinitis was a much better diagnosis than ruptured this or torn that, but it also meant that there wasn't a sure solution. I just can't go have someone open my knee up and make it all better. Stupid science. Instead, I have to do a bunch of exercises and take some naproxen to keep the swelling down.

Thankfully, I've been able to start running and playing basketball again. It's probably not the smartest thing to do, but the weather is getting nice and I can't just sit on my ass and watch stuff I've Netflix'd (that reminds me -- I'm going to try and get my Netflix queue up here at some point). I definitely sucked playing ball this morning. I can't quite go at full speed, nor cut as effectively as normal. Hopefully I'll get back to 100% over the next couple of weeks.

Anyway, that's my bitch session. My knee sucks. I'm too young for my body to start falling apart. Scarily, J.D. Drew has had chronic patellar tendinits throughout his major league career, and has never quite lived up to the expectations he had coming out of Florida State. This year, however, he's looking pretty studly at the plate and in the outfield (7 HRs in 105 ABs, which is just off the pace he set in his career year of 2001). Apparently all I need to overcome a bad knee is a few years and the resources of 2 baseball teams.